Goa: Day after Vishwajit Rane’s U-turn, Covid victims’ kin recall oxygen shortage

PANAJI: The government’s bold assertion on the floor of the House that no deaths occured due to oxygen shortages during the peak of the second Covid wave has rekindled anger and frustration among families of those who died. From being racked with guilt and struggling to sleep, those left behind were still struggling to come to terms with their loss when they came across health minister Vishwajit Rane’s cold denial in the legislative assembly.
W D’Souza, from a village in South Goa, said he saw many people breathe their laboured last breath in the first fortnight of May while he tended to his mother at GMC. “I have seen people dying due to lack of oxygen. It was really sad. The doctors asked us to use stretchers and trolleys to bring as many as seven oxygen cylinders from the ground floor,” he told TOI.
His mother passed away, despite doctors telling him that she was getting better. Guilt and anger overwhelm him in waves, as he recalls the time he spent by his mother’s bedside at GMC. His stay at GMC coincided with the peak of the second wave, when at least 75 Covid fatalities were reported on a single day.
“I still can’t sleep at night. Those were the worst days of my life,” said D’Souza after a long pause. “I keep recollecting her memories, and it seems this pain will last forever, and now, the government is denying it.”
He isn’t the only one. “My uncle died because his family could not get a replacement oxygen cylinder on time. Now that the government says that nobody died, I feel frustrated,” said Rajesh Kalangutkar from Ponda. Kalangutkar said that the loss of his uncle, the only earning member in the family, remains like a fresh wound for the extended family.
Saligao resident Ashley Delaney remembers patients and doctors scrambling for oxygen. “After about two weeks, the doctors had begun to give up. I saw their helplessness when they said their pleas were falling on deaf ears. You feel helpless too,” he said.
Delaney, whose own father-in-law underwent treatment at GMC, spent his spare hours there assisting other patients with food and oxygen supplies. As one of the many faceless volunteers during the second Covid-19 wave, he got an unfiltered view of the challenges at GMC, most critically the oxygen shortage.
From the start of May, doctors at GMC were repeatedly flagging the shortage of oxygen supplies to the directorate of health services, Scoop Oxygen — that had a monopoly over oxygen supply to the hospital — and even the chief minister’s office. The SOS calls would usually begin around 11pm, and would continue till 6am.
The flow of medical oxygen through the main pipeline would dip in wards 145, 142, 148 and 123, prompting doctors, relatives and attendants to frantically search for oxygen cylinders.
On May 11, Rane held a press conference to announce that 26 Covid-19 patients died between 2am and 6am at GMC during the second wave due to a drop in oxygen supply. He had called for a high court probe into the deaths and the drop in oxygen supply, and had also written to chief minister Pramod Sawant asking for at least four 5,000-litre oxygen tanks or a large 20,000-litre oxygen tank to be installed at GMC. On May 15, a 20,000-litre oxygen tank was installed.
“If there was no problem in oxygen supply, why did the government install such a huge capacity oxygen tank? And what was the need for resident doctors to hook up two to three patients on to one oxygen cylinder?” asked a senior doctor who was posted at GMC during the crisis.
Doctors said the state government was hiding behind a technicality while denying the deaths due to oxygen shortage. Doctors said the death certificates mention acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), cardiac arrest, acute pneumonia or Covid-19 as the official cause of death, with no mention of asphyxia or respiratory arrest being made.
“We have recordings of calls from the official GMC line where doctors were themselves telling us they are running out of oxygen. Were GMC doctors lying on the official landline of GMC?,” asked Shruti Chaturvedi, who started the Covid Care Goa initiative.
“I remember my father-inlaw survived for two extra weeks because he got an oxygen cylinder from a person who had just expired. It was clear that medical oxygen was not enough,” said Delaney.